Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

I don’t miss books or bookstores

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Many spots around the interweebs have mentioned this insanely stupid interview by Jonathan Franzen, in which he says such brilliant things as

“Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring.”

and

If printed books do become obsolete in the next 50 years, Franzen is pleased that at least he won’t have to see it. “One of the consolations of dying is that [you think], ‘Well, that won’t have to be my problem’.”

Here’s to hoping that Mr. Franzen was quoted wildly out of context, because there’s nothing to say to that other than, “Oy gevalt.”

Let me help you out with this, Jonathan: the medium is not the message.

A physical book is just a thing.

(Also, Luddism isn’t nearly as cute as Luddites seem to think it is. But I’ll save that for another time.)

When Darin and I moved from Los Angeles back to the Silicon Valley, I think we donated about 30 boxes of books to whatever charity organization we were gifting with our things. When we moved from the house into the rental house at the beginning of the remodel, I think we got rid of another 30 boxes. When we moved from the rental back into the house, we were so determined to get rid of physical objects that even though we’d started to move to mostly e-books, we still had another 20 boxes of books we gave away.

We didn’t give away the ideas.

We didn’t give away the amazing writing (or lack thereof — you know who I’m talking about).

We gave away the things.

We had several bookcases built into our house, mostly by the front door and in my office), and that’s pretty much all the bookcases we need. If I really went for it, I could get rid of at least a third of the books in my office and not even notice.

Here’s the thing, Jonathan: in today’s brave new world, you can still have a book on paper if you really need it. There are tons and tons of print-on-demand places — in fact, your big fancy-schmancy publishers are probably using the same POD outfits that self-published authors are. We just don’t have to, anymore. Now I can have my books any time, anywhere I want.

You know what else I can have, Jonathan?

  • Bigger print anytime, if I want it, without having to pay the exorbitant large-print edition prices.
  • A copy of the book seconds after I hear about it.
  • Books that have been out on the market more than 3 months. Try that in a bookstore, these days.

I don’t want to fill my house with more stuff. I still want to read lots of books. E-books are an awesome way to fulfill both of those needs.

Besides which: bookstores are not really great places right now. For one thing, they’re hard to find: here in Silicon Valley, where we’re all living in the future, there’s a Barnes and Noble at the Pruneyard, and a Barnes and Noble over on Stevens Creek and…uh…yeah, that’s all I got. The biggest independent bookstore in the area I can think of (actually, to be honest, its the only indie bookstore I can think of) is Kepler’s, which closed once in 2005 and, now with the retirement of the owner effective today, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it went out of business again real soon now. There are NO Barnes and Nobles in the entire city of San Francisco (although they do have more independent bookstores).

I knew Borders was going to go out of business when I realized that their entire floor design was built around their bargain books giveaway, which was always placed right inside the front door, no matter what Borders I went to. Barnes and Noble, which I always liked better because they were far, far more likely to actually have the book I was looking for, has replaced its yards and yards of bookshelves with games and caps and other knickknacks most decidedly un-booklike.

Making it far more likely that they don’t have the book I’m looking for anyhow. Chain bookstores haven’t made discovering new books a better task for the past number of years. An independent bookstore like Kepler’s is great for that (always found something on their tables), but they’re 25 miles away. And I don’t like to be the kind of person who discovers something in a shop and then buys it online — if I discover it in your store, you deserve the sale.

And as I’ve said: I don’t want physical books any more.

So we’ll keep our collections of Terry Pratchett books and Patrick O’Brien books and the Harry Potter series on paper. And a really kickass beautifully laid-out and photographed cookbook collection. But 99% of the time I don’t need actual physical books to enjoy them, Jonathan. I read them for the words. That’s what I remember about the experience. Not how whatever device — Kindle, iPhone, or paper and cardboard — felt in my hand.

Oh, and that book smell people are always yammering on about? Glue and mold, among other things. You’re welcome.

§

Update: There’s an article in the paper about Kepler’s challenges and how they’re planning on facing them.

The best thing in my laundry room

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There were lots of things I wanted to add to the house when we did the remodel. Some of them I got (the mixer lift, which has been a lot of trouble — I expected my yuppie forebears to have figured this out already!) and some of them I didn’t (the kitchen sink pedal, which I really wanted so I didn’t have to touch the faucet handles while fixing dinner, but it wasn’t planned for correctly, so…).

One thing I really needed to figure out was what to do about my laundry room.

Pre-remodel, all I’d had was a hallway for the washer and dryer, which meant I usually ended up doing the laundry in the dining room. Which we therefore rarely used because there was always a huge pile of laundry on the table. I also had a gigantic clothes rack installed in the corner of the dining room for all of the air-dry stuff: my workout clothes, my unmentionables, my sweaters… Basically, our dining room was the laundry.

After the remodel, enough space was added to make the laundry room an actual room, with cabinets and things.

Retracted

My new laundry room, complete with laundry

And the best part is the one that most people don’t even notice.

Go ahead, look for it….

No, not the Amazon box. That needs to go out the side door to the recycling bin. Ignore the box.

No, not the huge quantity of cabinets that I haven’t even filled up yet. I know, right? How is that possible? I have no idea. I’m not trying especially hard to fill them; I figure that will just come with time.

Oh, all right, here it is:

Retracted with arrow

The clothes rack

I did lots of research, trying to find a)an indoor clothes drying rack that b)could handle lots of laundry and c)would get the hell out of the way when not being used. Lots of people have walked through my laundry room only to have me point out the rack and then they say, “Whoa! I noticed your piles of laundry and your empty Amazon boxes, but I did not notice that.”

I eventually ended up on a Swiss site, because I couldn’t find anything domestically made that fit my requirements. I almost went for a British kitchen rack, but I decided the sleeker Swiss German model fit our needs better. I can’t find the exact model we got online, but I’m pretty sure it was a Stewi.

This thing is awesome, particularly as 92% of my clothing now requires air-drying.

It works like this: you lower the rack from the ceiling using a very high-tech “twine” system.

Downandclosed

The rack, lowered

Then you open the wings.

Downandopen

Prepared for flight

Then you load it up, however you like, either with things hanging on one of the rungs, or laying flat out over several, and retract the whole thing up to the ceiling.

Fullyloaded

I will have clean clothes again soon

I am very fond of my Miele washer and dryer, and the long counter over there on the left-hand side, currently loaded with many baskets’ worth of laundry is quite nice too. But this drying rack is DA BOMB.

Seeing your work

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I finally got to see my play “The Bank” today at the Santa Cruz Actors’ Theater 8 10s at 8 Festival. Alas for my fans out there: it was the closing day.

8 Tens POSTER 2

It was such a thrill to be chosen for the production! It’s nerve-wracking when you’re in the theater, waiting for the show to begin: What if it isn’t any good? What if the other plays are so much better that mine just seems stupid? What if other people think it’s great and I think it’s stupid?

Long story short: I thought my play turned out pretty good. I’m never going to be able to see my work cold, though: I always know what was going through my mind when I wrote something, and I know that certain things I wanted to achieve aren’t there (and maybe it wasn’t clear to any of the participants that they were there). The guy I went to the show with (I’ll call him “Darin”) liked my play very much, which is always quite a relief to me, as he is what they call in the business “A Very Tough Critic.” I know what he’s like critiquing my work, and I’m his wife; I can’t imagine what it’s like to work for him.

Still: it’s always easier to see other people’s work from a distance. It’s completely difficult to see yours without knowing how the sausage was made.

Although I did know something about the production of the play in the festival written by a friend of mine, something that affected the final staging quite a bit. I didn’t tell Darin until the play was over, and he was shocked. “My God, that was the worst thing about that play!” he said. Apparently it was an element obvious to everyone except the director, who insisted on running with it anyhow.

One of the “nice” things about being a playwright is that you are, in fact, the final say on how your work is staged. No one can change a word without your say-so. Actors are on book, dammit; there is no “improvisation” or “inspiration” with the text as there is in movies and TV. The playwright has the right to pull the play at any time, because they own the copyright on the play. Screenwriters traded that power for money, so screenwriters get paid a lot to get shoved around and shat on; playwrights make no money whatsoever but are considered the author of the work.

Just depends what you think is important, that’s all.

Anyhow. It’s really exciting to see real live people saying words I wrote in a situation I dreamed up. I can’t imagine getting tired of that.